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A Tale of Two Crimes

In a week where the fact that the richest, most famous and most handsome golfer on the planet turns out to have been unfaithful to his wife dominates the news stories, I would like to tell a tale of two crimes.

Crime 1

One evening last summer in my community a pickup truck with three men in it drove by a local landscaper. Noticing that he was black they saw fit to shout some racial slurs at him. He invited them to discuss their racist views face to face and the three men jumped out of the truck to set upon him. A fist fight ensued, in which the landscaper bested the three assailants. As a fight goes it was routine, nobody required a trip to the ER, and it was all over fairly quickly.

What gave the story “legs” was the fact that it was videoed and put on “YouTube”, from which it was subsequently picked up by the Globe and Mail. The international outrage was absolutely staggering. As a city councillor I received mail from such crime-free cities as Toronto and Vancouver. One man was going to organize a boycott of the city if we failed to take action. A man from Brussels was “reconsidering his travel plans” as the city was a “known hotbed of racial violence.” Some of the emails were so critical that one could consider them hate mail. The RCMP, having some excellent footage of the crime, promptly arrested the three idiots, charged them with crimes under existing law and set up the court date.

Crime 2

A young woman from our community was murdered last week. Well known and respected as a fine young citizen, a talented musician, with a giving heart and a generous spirit, she had unlimited potential. Her life cruelly snuffed out, her family shattered, her community is shocked and grieving. The RCMP are investigating.

I have yet to receive an e mail or a phone call or a letter expressing any concern. It appears that in this “age of outrage” only those crimes that are spoon fed to us seem to outrage us. This, sadly, reverses the scales of what is important, and raises the merely notorious above the truly heinous.

For more information contact:

Comox Air Force Museum
Military Row/Ryan Road, Comox, B.C.
Tel. 250-339-8126
www.comoxairforcemuseum.ca

“To live in a nation and not know its history is akin to being a leaf and being unaware of the tree.”

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